May the Horse Be With You

by John Pasden

04 Feb 2014

I wasn’t expecting Star Wars to get in on the CNY festivities, but here it is:

The pun is (in traditional characters originally):

> “星”年快樂

In simplified, that’s:

> “星”年快乐

新年快乐 means “Happy New Year.” The pun replaces 新 (xin: “new”) with 星 (xing: “star”). The two are both first tone, and do sound very similar in Chinese (in fact, many native speakers don’t carefully distinguish between the “-n” and “-ng” finals of many syllables), and Star Wars in Chinese is 星球大战 (literally, “Star War(s)”).